Sonny Liew, ‘Kill or Be Killed,’ ‘Saga’ top this year’s Eisner nomination list

Fantagraphics and Image Comics receive 20 nominations each.

Comic-Con International has announced the nominees for the 2017 Eisner Awards, presented annually in San Diego at the convention.

Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye tops the list with six nominations, while Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples’ Saga tied with Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Kill or Be Killed tied with four nominations each. On the publisher front, Fantagraphics and Image Comics both received 20 nominations each, the most of any publisher.

Per CCI, this year’s judges made two changes to the categories. They did not choose any nominees for Best Adaptation from Another Medium, so that category will not be on the ballot. And they divided what was previously Best Webcomic/Digital Comic into two categories, with nominees for webcomic comprising works produced originally to be viewed online, and nominees for digital comic comprising works that use a traditional comic book format available for viewing and/or download as PDFs or similar formats.

The winners will be announced on the evening of Friday, July 21 at Comic-Con International.

UPDATE, May 3: Love Is Love, the anthology edited by Marc Andreyko that raised $165,000 in support of victims of the Orlando Pulse nightclub attack, has been added to the list of nominees in the “Best Anthology” category on the CCI site. While there hasn’t been an official statement released by CCI about the addition, Bleeding Cool notes a conversation between Steven Scott of IDW Publishing (who published the anthology) and Eisner administrator Jackie Estrada, who said the book wasn’t eligible this year because Amazon showed its release date as being Jan. 10. The book was released to comic shops in late December, just a few days before the cutoff date of Dec. 31.

Check out the full list of nominees below:

Best Short Story
“The Comics Wedding of the Century,” by Simon Hanselmann, in We Told You So: Comics as Art (Fantagraphics)
“The Dark Nothing,” by Jordan Crane, in Uptight #5 (Fantagraphics)
“Good Boy,” by Tom King and David Finch, in Batman Annual #1 (DC)
“Monday,” by W. Maxwell Prince and John Amor, in One Week in the Library (Image)
“Mostly Saturn,” by Michael DeForge, in Island Magazine #8 (Image)
“Shrine of the Monkey God!” by Kim Deitch, in Kramers Ergot 9 (Fantagraphics)

Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 8)Ape and Armadillo Take Over the World, by James Sturm (Toon)Burt’s Way Home, by John Martz (Koyama)The Creeps, Book 2: The Trolls Will Feast! by Chris Schweizer (Abrams)I’m Grumpy (My First Comics), by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm (Random House Books for Young Readers)Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea, by Ben Clanton (Tundra)

Best Graphic Album—ReprintDemon, by Jason Shiga (First Second)Incomplete Works, by Dylan Horrocks (Alternative)Last Look, by Charles Burns (Pantheon)Meat Cake Bible, by Dame Darcy (Fantagraphics)Megg and Mogg in Amsterdam and Other Stories, by Simon Hanselmann (Fantagraphics)She’s Not into Poetry, by Tom Hart (Alternative)

Best U.S. Edition of International MaterialEquinoxes, by Cyril Pedrosa, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)Irmina, by Barbara Yelin, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)Love: The Lion, by Frédéric Brémaud and Federico Bertolucci (Magnetic)Moebius Library: The World of Edena, by Jean “Moebius” Giraud et al. (Dark Horse)Wrinkles, by Paco Roca, translated by Erica Mena (Fantagraphics)

Best Comics-Related Bookblanc et noir: takeshi obata illustrations, by Takeshi Obata (VIZ Media)Ditko Unleashed: An American Hero, by Florentino Flórez and Frédéric Manzano (IDW/Editions Déese)Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White, by Michael Tisserand (Harper)The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood, vol. 1, edited by Bhob Stewart and J. Michael Catron (Fantagraphics)More Heroes of the Comics, by Drew Friedman (Fantagraphics)

Best Academic/Scholarly Work Brighter Than You Think: Ten Short Works by Alan Moore, with essays by Marc Sobel (Uncivilized)Forging the Past: Set and the Art of Memory, by Daniel Marrone (University Press of Mississippi)Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism, by Paul Young (Rutgers University Press)Pioneering Cartoonists of Color, by Tim Jackson (University Press of Mississippi)Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation, by Carolyn Cocca (Bloomsbury)

Best Publication DesignThe Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, designed by Sonny Liew (Pantheon)The Complete Wimmin’s Comix, designed by Keeli McCarthy (Fantagraphics)Frank in the Third Dimension, designed by Jacob Covey, 3D conversions by Charles Barnard (Fantagraphics)The Realist Cartoons, designed by Jacob Covey (Fantagraphics)Si Lewen’s Parade: An Artist’s Odyssey, designed by Art Spiegelman (Abrams)